Joves en joc

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Can love be played with? How does videoludic interactivity symbolise affection? What types of relationships are represented by contemporary digital fiction? How does the screen and its promises of freedom predispose us to romantic playfulness? To reflect on these and many other questions, in this edition of Panòptic we have joined forces with Joves en Joc, the teenage space for video-play culture which, every Friday, in the Cre(acció) room of the Pompeu Fabra Library, allows us to approach a thematic selection of games with which to expand our gaze towards this medium. If you feel like trying out the loving collection of works prepared by the team for the occasion, all you have to do is go to the library and start playing.

Joves en joc is a gaming space aimed at teenagers and designed to show the plurality and aesthetic richness and enjoyment offered by the world of video games. Located in the Cre(acció) room of the Pompeu Fabra Library in Mataró, this initiative takes the form of a club where we meet every month to discover and try out new games and talk for a while, commenting on video games, their stories, their music, artistic design, and much more!

About games

This small kaleidoscope of videoludic representations of love is not intended to be a qualitative reflection of the medium. The selection should be understood as a journey in which each work chosen aims to show some of the ways in which contemporary video games have made the construct of love and affection an important part of their discourse. In it you will find from conceptual reflections on the relational with high loads of abstract symbolism to conflictive aestheticised representations of the romantic, as well as other games that simply naturalise everyday love as part of their interactive design. This prism of works, designed to be enjoyed by adolescent audiences, is therefore an invitation to look critically at video games as an expression of the affective, with many of their possibilities and some of their problems.

Haven
Developed by The Game Bakers, 2020

What if Romeo and Juliet, instead of dying, had escaped their terrible fate in a spaceship and landed on an unknown planet where they could – or at least tried to – build their loving everyday life? A cooperative game that invites us to think about the symbolic value of the routine when life becomes survival.

Plug&Play
Developed by Mario von Rickenbach and Michael Frei, 2015

Challenging essayistic work that constructs, through a brilliant audiovisual and mechanical mixture, an allegorical reflection on the current relational hyperconnectivity and its echoes in affective responsibilities.

It Takes Two
Developed by Hazelight Studios, 2021

An example of a generalist videogame that deals with love and heartbreak at the core of its narrative. In this cooperative game, we manage the members of a married couple, magically turned into dolls by their daughter, to try to symbolically overcome the relational difficulties they are going through.

Florence
Developed by Mountains*, 2018

A now canonical example of the ways in which video games are able to represent the dynamics and conflicts of living together in love through the symbolic use of their game mechanics.

*Ken Wong, the game’s lead designer, was accused of abuse of authority during the process of making the work. The discursive conflicts that can be interpreted in Florence’s narrative, as well as the seriousness of the accusations, have made us at Panòptic want to make them explicit and frame his choice in this way.

Bury Me, My Love
Developed by The Pixel Hunt, 2017

Is there space, time and relevance for affection while your partner tells you in real time, by whatsapp, about their migratory journey from Syria to Europe in search of a better future? An interesting work that fuses fictional and real times, to make us feel the uncomfortable anguish not only of the story but also of its possible absence. Because, how do we express ourselves when there is the possibility of never being answered again?

Selected by Lucas Ramada Prieto and the Pompeu Fabra Library team.